As you may have heard, Alice was a landmark case this year and everyone is talking about it. It's confusing, no one knows what it means. Basically, the Court said, "You can't patent an abstract idea unless there is something substantially more. What is substantially more? We can't say."

So I've been receiving the first of many Alice rejections and it's been kind of difficult figuring out what the heck I need to say in my response.

Based on the patents that's been receiving rejections. I'll tell you which patents are not going to be successfully prosecuted at least for the time being: business methods about money. Saving money, transferring money, allocating money... you name it. If it's a business method for "improving economy," it's probably going to be a no go. In truth, this isn't anything new. The Court already said this way back in Bilski. So in a way, Alice just validated what we already knew. Shame it didn't tell us more.

As case in point, I recently prosecuted this patent application claiming a fundraising system. The system describes how money is allocated from one location to many different locations. I received a 60 page office action that yelled at me about how this fundraising system was an abstract idea. Although I really wanted to argue how it wasn't an abstract idea, there was just really no way I had a strong case. I don't know how I could have had a better case... but sometimes, you just don't have a solid invention and you have to roll with all you have. We'll see how my arguments panned out in a few months.